Ever had a bad day and let other people know it? Most of us behave in difficult ways sometimes. Our partners and friends are good at knowing what irritates us and at finding ways to ensure that our lives can run as smoothly as possible. We do the same for them.

If you have a learning disability – particularly a severe learning disability and no speech – it is not easy to communicate what is important to you. The way you behave becomes the clearest indicator of how you are feeling. If you are unhappy and frustrated, or anxious and frightened, you may sometimes be aggressive to others or potentially harmful to yourself. This is generally referred to by health and social care professionals as 'challenging behaviour'.

When working with people with challenging behaviour, professionals need to establish what such behaviours mean and to adapt or change their own approach in order to reduce anxiety and distress. This takes skill, which is perfectly possible to acquire and to teach to others.

The recent BBC Panorama programme on Winterbourne View in Bristol showed the systematic abuse of people with learning disabilities, who sometimes displayed challenging behaviour. We witnessed staff apparently provoking a reaction from the people they were paid to care for in order to physically restrain them, sometimes in very unorthodox ways. No wonder those 'patients' were challenging.

Winterbourne View described itself as a hospital, specialising in the care of people with complex needs. At a cost of £3,500 per week, what those people received was nothing short of thuggery, with families kept at arm's length and only able to meet their loved ones in a designated visitor area.

There are other hospitals – or units as they are commonly known – such as Winterbourne View. Not only do they command high fees, they are often far from where people who live in them actually come from. And being further away from the very people who mean something to you can make you even more unhappy, somewhat defeating the object.

Ironically – and despite at least three influential reports on the subject over the last two decades – the development of support services close to where people already live are under-resourced. If we ask ourselves the question: "If I needed skilled help, would I like it locally or somewhere many miles away from me?" how many of us would opt for the latter? Not many.

Yet there is an alternative. The Association for Supported Living – an umbrella body of social care providers – has drawn together, predominantly from our members, many stories of people who have moved out of large institutional settings, to be supported well in their own homes in ordinary, everyday settings.

In their new homes these people are supported by skilled staff who know them well enough to understand what works and what doesn't. These staff work hand in glove with the families and friends of those they support, and alongside other local professionals. The result is that many people are being helped to lead fulfilling lives in the locality of their choice, irrespective of the complexity of their support needs.

In every instance, the stories we have collected show that not only is the support and care that people receive much better than that provided in large institutional settings, it is significantly cheaper too. There is no reason whatsoever not to use in a much more effective way the resources tied up in large, sometimes remote and supposedly specialist units.

We have written to all MPs outlining why and how this is possible, and we will be following this up with further evidence in the autumn. The only encouraging thing to come out of the Winterbourne View scandal was the shock and disgust shown by the general public. Let's change things for the better, and do it quickly while the memories of abuse are fresh in our minds.